Arizona Rep on Immigration Fight's 'Diminishing Returns'

This spring, the Arizona legislature passed SB 1070, ostensibly to deal with the problem of illegal immigration at the state level, but instead creating a firestorm by codifying in law the practice of racial profiling in Arizona, a state that is one-third Latino. Shortly after the bill passed, Tucson congressman Raul Grijalva called for an economic boycott of the state until the law changed, a move that qualifies in any time or place as brave. We spoke to him at the time. In the ensuing eight weeks, a roiling national argument has broken out over essential questions of our national identity, what exactly it means to be a nation of immigrants, and the ugly specter of institutionalized racism. A few days ago, the Justice Department said that Attorney General Holder intends to challenge the constitutionality of SB 1070 in court, and ABC's Jake Tapper is reporting that a lawsuit is "likely" to come as soon as next week. We spoke to Grijalva again about what has been a very eventful couple of months.

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ESQUIRE: Congressman, we last talked when the law was passed and your boycott was beginning. A few days ago, the administration announced that the Attorney General would be filing suit against your state, Arizona, to challenge the law. From your perspective, how did this happen?

RAUL GRIJALVA: Well, from the beginning, myself and Congressman Pastor communicated to the White House that we needed for them to intervene, to seek an injunction. And other members as well, from other parts of the country, asked the president to define what he meant when he said the law was "misguided." There were constitutional issues involved, Supremacy Clause issues involved, and civil rights issues involved. All of which we believed not only merited a review, but at some point the active intervention of the Justice Department. So we are glad to hear that that has happened. We wish it would have happened sooner. Because we continue to believe that law is unconstitutional. There are six active lawsuits, but the Justice Department can really speed up the judicial process.

ESQ: Right. And this law is set to take effect in just a few weeks. Early on, just as you called for the boycott of Arizona, you sent a letter to the White House appealing to the president to withdraw federal support for the enforcement of the law. Did you get an answer to that letter, or is the Justice Department intervention the answer to that letter?

RG: This is the answer to that letter. We also did a follow-up to the White House staff after the president's announcement about the $500 million more for enforcement for more border patrol, and the 1,200 National Guard troops on the border. We understood the motivation for the increased border security allocation, but we did communicate that that still left us in a lurch given that 1070 is the law and the fact that there had been no response from them to 1070 directly. So this is the answer.

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ESQ: How's the boycott going?

RG: You know, it's a double-edged sword in the sense that there's a significant backlash to the fact that people are denying conventions and conferences here. We just had a report here that one of the major malls here in Southern Arizona has seen a 40 percent drop in retail sales of people from, primarily Mexico, coming to shop here. Those are the economic consequences that we predicted were going to happen. There has been a loss — I think the city of Phoenix is predicting that if nothing changes — a $90 million loss in revenue projected from lost conventions and conferences.

You know, one of the first conventions to cancel was up to 5,000 people, which was Martin Luther King's fraternity which was going to have a convention in Phoenix and they had to scramble and within a days of the governor's signature they cancelled and moved it to Las Vegas. That should have been a harbinger of things to come for the governor. What we did with the boycott was very specific: If you agree with us that this law is bad, that this law is unconstitutional, that it is divisive, that it violates people's civil rights with racial profiling, and if you're an organization that agrees with us, then take your business elsewhere. And some people have. The extent of it is hard to gauge because there's been some, there's a musical group boycott going on at the same time but we're also working with organizations here that, Artists for Justice is the name of it here, that are promoting festivals to not only oppose the law but to continue to have venues where musicians come into a — for lack of a better word — a sanctuary in which their opposition to the law is not compromised and that you're still able to register people to vote at those concerts and musical events. They're very clear about their opposition to the law. I find it ironic that the resort industry and chamber of commerce are so concerned about the loss of business but have yet to state publicly how they feel about the law.

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ESQ: Congressman, have any Republicans in your delegation evinced any support for the boycott, even privately?

RG: Privately, yes. I can't tell you who the individuals are, but privately, yes. They know that this [law] is going to hurt on two levels. It's going to hurt the Republican party's ability to ever communicate for a generation with Latino voters who continue to grow in the state of Arizona and in the Southwest. And two: It's bad for business. Even they see it as a bad thing politically and economically.

ESQ: Less than a week after the governor signed SB 1070, the legislature — obviously in a panic move — went back and passed amendments to it. As far as they were concerned, these amendments solved the problem completely. What's your view?

RG: I think that the changes at best are cosmetic, to try to minimize the damage this legislation does.

Remember, it's not just SB 1070. Arizona now has birther legislation on the books. You have the new law that says that all ethnic studies programs in the state of Arizona are now banned. You have that if you have an accent you cannot teach students that are learning English in this state. That passed and was signed into law. And now you have the citizens' issue, which is a direct challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment, that'll be the next piece of legislation that's done. Then you put 1070 on top of it, which we felt identified a group of people based on appearance more than anything else. So there's a pattern here. 1070 was the peak of a crescendo that's been building in the state for the last five or six years.

ESQ: The amendments to 1070 that the governor signed basically articulate that racial profiling is against the law. But in order to enforce 1070 in any meaningful way, it seems that some degree of racial profiling is required.

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RG: Yeah, there is no other way around this. The police officer in Tucson that's suing because he feels that this law is going to prevent him from doing his job, has said, "When I see a car where the glass is broken, and there's two people trying to get stuff out of the car, I have reasonable suspicion that they are breaking into a car and I can stop them. When I stop a car and the door opens and I smell pot, and there's a bag of stuff on the seat, I have reasonable suspicion that they have violated a drug law. When I see a group of Latinos standing on the corner, do I now have reasonable suspicion that one or all are undocumented?"

ESQ: Under 1070, even as amended, you do.

RG: Yeah, you do.

ESQ: It seems like once a generation or so we have a spasm of anti-immigrant fervor in this country, and it's been that way since the beginning. We've been going through such a period in the last half a dozen years or so. Why do you think it's had such a profound effect and actually gotten such incredible results in Arizona? The litany of legislation that you just recited for me — why have the stars aligned in to make Arizona the laboratory for all this?

RG: That's a great question, Mark. I think that it is the growing population here of Latinos. The population continues to grow and it's the fastest growing. At some point soon it's one out of every three kids coming into kindergarten is going to be Latino in this state. It's not as simple as just being nativist. This growing population is seen as a threat. Whether it's Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, you name it, it's just feeding and feeding. Here's what 1070 did. Underlying the issue of immigration here in Arizona and in other parts has been the issue of race. But what 1070 did, both in Arizona and on a national level, is put the question of race front and center in the debate. Now that's part of the issue, a big part of the issue. It was always there, but now it's out in the open.

ESQ: How long do you intend to see this boycott through?

RG: At some point it will have diminishing returns, to be quite honest with you. We're going to look for opportunities to encourage people to come to this state, but to come with a sense that they're part of the opposition to this law, as opposed to blindly ignoring the fact that we have this law in this state. We're looking at a political change that is probably a decade away. So in the meantime what becomes the avenue to undo this law is the courts. And we have to rely on those remedies primarily right now. I think the economic sanctions against the state right now are effective but they're not going to change the law. Which is why we were pressing Obama and the administration so hard, because that becomes the most expedient way to rectify this situation.

ESQ: What do you expect the outcome of the Justice Department lawsuit to be? And how long do you reckon it might take?

RG: I think we'll get an injunction, I really do.

ESQ: In short order?

RG: Yes. That's why it was so important for the White House to jump in, because they expedite the process.